8 Burials for Jerusalem Seminary’s Dead

The students were mourned at the seminary, Mercaz Harav yeshiva, on Friday.Credit
Sebastian Scheiner/Associated Press

KFAR ETZION, West Bank — They carried the body of Avraham David Moses, 16 years old, on a stretcher down the slope of the vibrant green cemetery here, shaded by tall pines, overlooking a valley, in utter silence.

The boy was wrapped in a black-and-white prayer shawl, and as the pallbearers slipped him into the grave on Friday, the long silence was broken by quiet weeping and occasional sobs.

Men recited psalms, and Naftali Moses, the boy’s father, his garments torn in grief, said the Hebrew prayer for the dead, his voice breaking, before moving back up the slope to the parking lot, through a somber line of mourners, men on one side, women on the other.

The boy’s stepmother, Leah, described Avraham David, as he was known, as “a really good kid — he would come home and unload the dishwasher without being asked.” If the adults started gossiping at the table, she said, he would recite mishnayot, or oral teachings. “He was just an incredible blessing,” she said.

Avraham David was one of eight seminary students killed Thursday night in an act of terrorism, shot by a Palestinian from East Jerusalem who sprayed them with hundreds of rounds of automatic weapons fire before being killed himself. Ten other students were wounded, three of them seriously.

It was unclear what group, if any, was responsible for the massacre. The radical Islamic Hamas movement praised the deed on Thursday but did not claim it.

On Friday an anonymous caller claiming to be from Hamas took responsibility in a phone call to Reuters and said that details would come later. But Fawzi Barhoum, a senior Hamas spokesman in Gaza, said that no claim was official unless made in a written statement signed by the military wing of Hamas. The family of the gunman, identified as Ala Abu Dhaim, 25, said he had been intensely religious, but did not belong to any militant group.

Photo

A student was evacuated from Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem after the gun attack on Thursday. Credit
Kevin Frayer/Associated Press

Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said Israel would act after proper investigation and deliberation, and he condemned those, like Hamas, who celebrated the killings with parades in Gaza. “That Hamas calls this a heroic act, and praises it, this exposes them for what they are,” he said.

The young men died as they were studying in the library of the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem, a major center for the religious Zionist movement that supports Israeli settlement in the West Bank — settlements like this one, which Israel intends to keep in any future peace treaty.

The dead, most of them 15 or 16, with the oldest 26, were all buried Friday, in separate funerals drawing thousands of weeping and angry Israelis.

The funeral processions began together earlier on Friday at the yeshiva itself, where thousands of people, many of them in the traditional black clothing of the ultra-Orthodox or wearing knitted skullcaps, characteristic of more modern religious Zionists, lined the streets. In the large courtyard, where the blood had been washed away, eight benches were marked with the names of the dead, and one wall of the yeshiva was covered with large posters listing them.

As each body was brought forward to rest on its bench, the crowds outside the gates parted to let the pallbearers pass, with cries and screams from relatives and friends.

In every corner, students hugged and cried, and many went to see and touch the closed library door, shattered by bullets. In his eulogy, the yeshiva’s chief rabbi, Yaakov Shapira, said that the gunman had made targets of “everyone living in the holy city of Jerusalem” and criticized the Olmert government for its willingness to negotiate the return of some occupied land to the Palestinians.

“The time has come for all of us to understand that an external struggle is raging, and an internal struggle, and everyone believes the hour has come for us to have a good leadership, a stronger leadership, a more believing leadership,” he said.

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Men waited outside the gates of the Mercaz Harav yeshiva on Thursday after a man entered the library and killed eight students.Credit
Yannis Behrakis/Reuters

Weeping, Rabbi Shapira said, “The murderers are the Amalek of our day, coming to remind us that Amalek has not disappeared, just changed its appearance.” The Amalekites were indigenous nomads who attacked the Israelites on their flight from Egypt, and were annihilated by King David. “God asked Abraham to sacrifice his only son,” the rabbi said. “We had to sacrifice eight.”

The ceremony ended as it began, with the procession of bodies taken out of the gates, one by one, for their separate burials.

The Israeli government declared a high alert on Friday and barred Palestinians in the West Bank from traveling to Jerusalem over the weekend, deploying thousands of police officers and limiting the numbers of Muslims allowed to pray at the Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem.

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The killer was a Palestinian with permanent residency in Jerusalem. His home in the Jebel Mukaber neighborhood of East Jerusalem was adorned Friday with the flags of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah. According to his family, he was a driver for a private company that had made deliveries to the yeshiva, but the police would not confirm that.

His family said that although he had been intensely religious, he was not a member of any militant group, and he had planned on marrying this summer. But he had been transfixed by the bloodshed in Gaza, where 126 Palestinians died from Wednesday through Monday, his sister, Iman Abu Dhaim, told The Associated Press. Several of his relatives were detained for questioning.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, condemned the killing of civilians by both sides, and Israel said it would continue peace talks with him. Mr. Abbas had suspended such talks after the Gaza deaths.

Mr. Regev urged Mr. Abbas to do more to stop terrorism. “They have clear obligations to act against terror cells,” he said. “While we understand that they have limitations on their capabilities today, we believe that they could be doing much more.”

A senior Israeli official who spoke anonymously because of the delicacy of the issue said many details about the killing were unclear and no major decisions had been made. Mr. Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni “understand that there is no quick fix for Hamas, that this will take time, and the goal is to continually apply pressure on the Hamas leadership — economic, military, diplomatic and political,” the official said.